Funeral Services At The Church
FUNERAL SERVICES AT THE CHURCH
At the close of this service the casket was placed on a massive bier, and thirty-two Mt. Hermon students bore it to the Congregational Church, where it was to lie in state. During the next three hours fully three thousand persons looked for the last time at the face of the great, good man. The casket was placed directly in front of the altar, and around it were banked many floral tributes.
The gathering at the church for the funeral service at 2:30 was notable. Men from all walks of life - clergymen, business men, tillers of the soil - came side by side to pay a last tribute. The services were as simple and as impressive as if he himself had planned them. The voice of the loved one was still, but his presence was felt.
The hymn, "A Little While and He Shall Come," was followed by the Rev. C. I. Scofield's prayer. The Rev. A. T. Pierson read the Scripture lesson from II Corinthians, iv. ii. This was followed by a prayer by Rev. George C. Needham, after which the congregation sang "Emmanuel's Land," the music being directed by Mr. A.. B. Phillips, Professor of Music in the Northfield Institute.
The Rev. Dr. Scofield then pronounced the eulogy, saying:
"We know,' 'We are always confident,' That is the Christian attitude toward the mystery of death. 'We know,' so far as the present body is concerned, that it is a tent in which we dwell. It is a convenience for this present life. Death threatens it, so far as we can see, with utter destruction. Soul and spirit instinctively cling to this present body. At that point revelation steps in with one of the great foundational certainties and teaches us to say We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'
There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. But that is not all. Whither after all shall we go when this earthly tent dwelling is gone? To what scenes does death introduce us? What, in a word, lies for the Christian just across that little trench which we call a grave? Here is a new and most serious cause of solicitude. And I here again revelation brings to faith the needed word: 'We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.'
"Note, now, how that assurance gives confidence. First, in that the transition is instantaneous. To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. And secondly, every question of the soul which might bring back an answer of fear is satisfied with that one little word 'home.'
"And this is the Christian doctrine of death. 'We know.' 'We are always confident.' In this triumphant assurance Dwight L. Moody lived, and at high noon last Friday he died. We are not met, dear friends, to mourn a defeat, but to celebrate a triumph. He 'walked with God and he was not, for God took him.' There in the West, in the presence of great audiences of 12,000 of his fellow-men, God spoke to him to lay it all down and come home. He would have planned it so.
"This is not the place, nor am I the man to present a study of the life and character of Dwight L. Moody. No one will ever question that we are laying today in the kindly bosom of earth the mortal body of a great man. Whether we measure greatness by quality of character or by qualities of intellect, Dwight L. Moody must be accounted great.
"The basis of Mr. Moody's character was sincerity, genuineness. He had an inveterate aversion to all forms of sham, unreality and pretence. Most of all did he detest religious pretence or cant. Along with this fundamental quality, Mr. Moody cherished a great love of righteousness. His first question concerning any proposed action was: 'Is it right?' But these two qualities, necessarily at the bottom of all noble characters, were in him suffused and transfigured by divine grace. Besides all this, Mr. Moody was in a wonderful degree brave, magnanimous and unselfish.
"Doubtless this unlettered New England country boy became what he was by the grace of God. The secrets of Dwight L. Moody's power were: First, in a definite experience of Christ's saving grace. He had passed out of death into life, and he knew it. Secondly, Mr. Moody believed in the divine authority of the Scriptures. The Bible was, to him, the voice of God, and he made it resound as such in the consciences of men. Thirdly, he was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and he knew it. It was to him as definite an experience as his conversion. Fourthly, he was a man of prayer; he believed in a divine and unfettered God. Fifthly, Mr. Moody believed in work, in ceaseless effort, in wise provision, in the power of organization, of publicity.
"I like to think of D. L. Moody in Heaven. I like to think of him with his Lord and with Elijah, Daniel, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Wesley and Finney.
"Farewell for a little time, great heart, may a double portion of the spirit be vouchsafed to us who remain."
The next address was by the Rev. H. B. Weston, of Crozier Theological Seminary, Chester, Pa., who said:
REV. H. B. WESTON'S ADDRESS
"I counted it among one of the greatest pleasures of my life that I had the acquaintance of Mr. Moody; that I was placed under his influence, and that I was permitted to study God's words and work through him.
He was the greatest religious character of this century. When we see men who are eminent among their fellows, we always attribute it to some special natural gift with which they are endowed, some special education they have received, or some magnetic personality with which they are blessed. Mr. Moody had none of these, and yet, no man had such power of drawing the multitude. No man could surpass him in teaching and influencing individuals - individuals of brain, of executive power. I am speaking to some of such this afternoon. Mr. Moody had the power of grouping them to himself with hooks of steel, and many of them were good workers with him many years; and they will carry on his work now that he has passed away.
"Mr. Moody had none of the gifts and qualifications that I have mentioned: no promise, and apparently no possibility, in his early life; no early promise, if he had any promise, of the life he had to lead. What had he? There was nothing else as interesting in Northfield as Mr. Moody to me. I listened to him with profound and great interest and profit, as the one who could draw the multitude as no one else in the world. He entered fully into the words, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' So he fed upon that word; his life was instantly a growth, because he fed on the Word of God, so that he might have it ready for every emergency.
All this was not for himself, but for others. He did not study the Bible for himself alone, but that he might add to his stock of knowledge. He did not study his Bible in order to criticize, but to make men partakers of that light which had enlarged his own soul, and that, I appeal to you, was the first desire of his heart, that other men might live.
"With this one conception in his heart he dots his plain all over with buildings which will stand until the millennium. His soul was full of joy, and that definite joy finds its expression like the Hebrew prophet. I don't think he himself sang, but he wanted the Gospel sung, and I used to listen to song after song and remember all the time this was simply the expression of that joy that welled up in his heart, the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ.
"You remember last summer how hopeful he was, constantly, as he compared himself to 'that old man of eighty years, and I am only sixty-two, and I have so much before me to live for.' Because D. L. Moody had mastered, or the power of Christ had so mastered, every fibre of his being; because of that completeness of consecration - I hardly dare say it - were Jesus Christ given the same body, the same mental caliber and surroundings, He would fill up his life much as Moody did, and that is the reason to-day that I would rather be Dwight L. Moody in his coffin than any living man on earth."
The next speaker was the Rev. R. A. Torrey, who said:
"It is often the first duty of a pastor to speak words of comfort to those whose hearts are aching with sorrow and breaking underneath the burden of death, but this is utterly unnecessary to-day. The God of all comfort has already abundantly comforted them, and they will be able to comfort others. I have spent hours in the past few days with those who were nearest to our departed friend, and the words I have heard from them have been words of 'Rest in God and triumph.'
REV. R. A. TORREY'S ESTIMATE OF MR. MOODY
"As one of them has said: 'God must be answering the prayers that are going up for us all over the world. We are being so wonderfully sustained.' Another has said: 'His last four glorious hours of life have taken all the sting out of death,' and still another, 'Be sure that every word to-day is a word of triumph.'
"Two thoughts has God laid upon my heart this hour. The first is that wonderful letter of Paul in I Corinthians, xv. 10: 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' God wonderfully magnified His grace in the life of D. L. Moody. God was magnified in his birth. The babe that was born sixty-two years ago - the wonderful soul was God's gift to the world. How much that meant to the world; how much the world has been blessed and benefited by it we shall never know this side the coming of Christ. God's grace was magnified in his conversion. He was born in sin, as we are, but God, by the power of His word, the regenerating power of His Holy Spirit, made him a mighty man of God. How much the conversion of that boy in Boston forty-three years ago meant to the world no man can tell, but it was God's grace that did it.
"God's grace and love were magnified again in the development of that character. He had the strength of body that was possessed by few sons of men.
"It was all from God. To God alone was it due that he differed from other men. That character was God's gift to a world that sorely needed men like him. God's grace and love were magnified again in his service. The great secret of his success was supernatural power, given in answer to prayer.
"Time and again has the question been asked, What was the secret of his wonderful power? The question is easily answered. There were doubtless secondary things that contributed to it, but the great central secret of his power was the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It was simply another fulfilment by God of the promise that has been realized throughout the centuries of the Church's history: 'Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost shall come upon you.
"God was magnified again in his marvelous triumph over death, but what we call death had absolutely no terrors for him. He calmly looked death in the face and said, 'Earth is receding. Heaven is opening. God is calling me. Is this death? It isn't bad at all. It is sweet. No pain. No valley. I have been within the gates! It is beautiful. It is glorious. Do not call me back. God is calling me.
"This was God's grace in Christ that was thus magnified in our brother's triumph over that last enemy, Death. From beginning to end, from the hour of his birth until he is laid at rest on yonder hilltop, Mr. Moody's life has been a promulgation of God's everlasting grace and love.
"The other thought, that God has laid upon my heart in these last few hours are those words of Joshua i. 2: 'Moses my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them'.
"The death of Mr. Moody is a call to his children, his associates, ministers of the Word everywhere, and to the whole Church: 'Go forward. Our leader has fallen.' 'Let us give up the work,' some would say. Not for a moment. Listen to what God says: 'Our leader has fallen. Move forward. Moses my servant is dead, therefore arise, go in and possess the land. As I was with D. L. Moody, so I will be with you. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.'
"It is remarkable how unanimous all those who have been associated with Mr. Moody are upon this point. The great institutions that he has established at Northfield, Mt. Hermon, and Chicago, and the work they represent, must be pushed to the front as never before. Many men are looking for a great revival.
"Mr. Moody himself said when he felt the call of death at Kansas City: 'I know how much better it would be for me to go, but we are on the verge of a great revival, like that of 1857, and I want to have a hand in it.' He will have a mighty hand in it. His death, with the triumphal scenes that surround it, are part of God's way of answering the prayers that have been going on for so long in our land for a revival.
"From this bier there goes up to-day a call to the ministry to the Church:
'Forward!' Seek, claim, receive the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and then go forthwith, to every corner, preach in public and in private to every man, woman, and child the infallible Word of God."